


to touch something real

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Memory Loss, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 04:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20633084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Clary meets a beautiful stranger at her first gallery opening.





	to touch something real

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [sh_ficletinstruments](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/sh_ficletinstruments) collection. 

> **Prompt:**
> 
> Person A is trying to maneuver through a crowd with a drink, but when someone bumps into them they lose their balance and spill their drink all over person B.

Clary is so keyed up—and, okay, maybe a little bit buzzed from two glasses of champagne on an empty stomach—that she doesn’t even register the sudden jolt of a body colliding briefly with hers in the crowd. At least not until a splash of cold liquid falls across her collarbone, sliding down into her cleavage to soak the underside of her bra.

“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry,” says a woman’s voice. “Here, let me—”

There’s a fumble as the woman in front of her spins in a graceful swirl of dark hair to snatch a napkin from a passing waiter. She dabs at Clary’s shoulder, the soaked fabric of her dress, then pauses as though she’s just now realizing the extent of the issue.

“I got it,” Clary says, taking the napkin away to scrub indelicately at the plunging neckline of her dress. It’s lower-cut than she’d normally wear, but she passed it in a store, and there was some weird, dumb fleeting impulse that made her pull it off the rack and try it on.

And now here she is, wearing it to her first real gallery opening, napkin shoved down the front to sop up cheap champagne in front of the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen.

God. Talk about bad timing.

The woman is staring at her with wide dark eyes. The drink that she just—well, mostly dumped down Clary’s dress, actually—is still clutched in one manicured hand.

“I am _so_ sorry,” she says again, and for a brief moment it looks like she’s about to reach out, to settle a hand on Clary’s shoulder, to—

—_smile, pull her into a quick hard embrace that smells like hot metal and expensive perfume—_

Clary shakes her head, rattled. The woman takes a step back. Her knuckles go white on the glass, and then she takes a deep breath and says, “Well! I didn’t mean to spill half a gallon of _awful_ champagne on the guest of honor, I'm so sorry. I was actually coming to talk to you about those amazing abstracts you have up in the other room.”

“Oh,” Clary says. Her dress is probably about as dry as she can make it, so she lets the napkin drop on a nearby chair as she’s drawn deeper into the gallery. “They started out as a weird experiment, actually—”

She stops herself before she can continue. Too much champagne, not enough dinner. There’s no way she’s going to tell this beautiful stranger about those frantic late-night sessions, the feeling that she’s trying to hang onto something important, something beautiful that always slips away from her fingertips. That can only come out as splashes of color and shadow, abstract imagery that makes her throat ache like she’s looking at a photograph of someone long-dead.

Crazy. And more to the point, not the kind of thing that sells.

"I think they're beautiful," the woman says. Her hand settles on Clary's arm. "Could you show me?”


End file.
